Saturday, January 28, 2017
We stayed in the Venice area another day to visit the Ringling Circus Museum. The real circus was in Tampa but was sold out. The next several months will be the last chance to see a live circus ever--go if you have a chance! The museum shows the fascinating history and development of the circus with films, costumes, and actual animal cages and railroad cars used in the circus. Just as interesting is the minature circus hand-made by one man. He has spent 50+ years on his hobby!
Also in Sarasota is a huge statue of the iconic kiss from WWII.
Sunday
It was a rainy day as we traveled to Gaspirilla Marina and it was just a convenient place to stop for the day. There was no scenic view, maybe 50 boats and hundreds of runabouts and fishing boats stacked in 2 huge buildings. Guess what--we saw another phone booth beside the waterway!! Don't know if it tok a dime or a quarter.
Monday
We only travel for about 2 hours to stop at Cabbage Key. It is a small island, but they claim it is the inspiration for Jimmy Buffet's song "Cheeseburger in Paradise". A tourist couple from France stopped to talk with us about America's Loop. He said it was their dream to someday to travel the Loop!
Still plenty of daylight and the weather is warmer so we walked the nature trails. The "snake spotter" (who else but Kelly) had to stomp on the ground to get the snake off the trail. It looked like a black snake about 3-4 feet long.
Dinner was excellent, I had the triple tail fish and of course Kelly had a cheeseburger! Cabbage Key is known for tour boats to stop just for their meals and the well stocked souvenir stand.
